


curl up with you, die with you alone

by leslie057



Series: Jancy week 2020 [3]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: 3x05, 3x06, Angst, Blood, F/M, Hospital scene, Hurt/Comfort, Near Death Experiences, Possible Character Death, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:02:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27369226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslie057/pseuds/leslie057
Summary: exploration of the hospital scene in season 3.written for jancy week day 3 theme: “dor” the sense of longing you feel because you’re separated from your lovetw: descriptions of blood
Relationships: Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler
Series: Jancy week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1994266
Kudos: 20





	curl up with you, die with you alone

Everything is alive. 

Everything.

Walls of a once pristine hospital room twist and bow before her, moving in at both hyperspeed and a painfully _low_ speed. The floor must not be convulsing under her—how could that be?—but, decidedly, it is. It feels that exact way. 

It’s all alive, shifting, and she is just paralyzed. 

In these moments, and others like them, when she can feel death’s giant scythe around her waist, her anger is so wild and vast. That someone, something, could hurt her this easily…

Unacceptable. What helplessness is reasonable? What excuse does she have for her weakness? She couldn’t have known to prepare for this, hidden a revolver under her skirt or brought matches, but at the least she should be able to _move._ And she can’t. Save for her ribs which vibrate with anticipation, a complement to the gifts of her unconscious panic: heart tremors and nausea and a burning wetness in her eyes. 

She sees blood now. 

There. Right there. The gap under the door—

Coagulated red creature creeps in with bones sticking out of its mush, smelling of foul copper and something poisonous. 

“Jonathan,” she whimpers. 

It leaves her mouth before she can choose for it to, soft and pathetic. 

It’s not...it can’t…he’s...

Did it have time? If he had followed it, it might have had time and a chance. It could have done something terrible and gruesome to him, while she was just in here. Standing still. Waiting.

Fuck, she wants to _not be here._ It needs to be a dream. Can it be a dream? She doesn’t believe in God, not really, but she finds herself pleading with Him furiously. She imagines waking in bed, escaping all of this in a split second, and when she realizes she won’t she cries harder. 

He had screamed her name in the corridor. _Screamed_ it. The memory is so recent but already so jaundiced. She knows he was scared, that it was his natural and desperate reaction. A reminder that she needed to run. But it sounded so much like a tortured goodbye, and she thinks it will haunt her for the rest of her life.

Well—

If her life lasts. 

The bloody muck changes shape, and all she can do is watch. It’s a lot. It’s a lot of blood. Too much. The insides of three men, surely, rather than two. It rises. Turns into a big, gory animal again.

And it knocks her down with so much force. 

She doesn’t mean to submit to it, but her former will to fight back abandons her. Floods out of her body with a careless haste, and she is left emptier than she could describe. To simply lift her arm or try and inch away would be to spend the rest of her energy.

It’s the new wave of horror that explains it. The way her mutating panic has formed an ocean in an instant. Wind-stirred water—no, it’s blood—thrashes around her until it tenderizes her muscles and she can’t keep up with the tide anymore. Jonathan’s skeletal form holds her tight and weighs her down. She lets him drown her; won’t it be better if they both die here? 

Now lying flat on the hard floor, she grieves. 

She’s happy to have loved him. To have shown him that he’s lovable. To be the first and only girl to share his nights and his mornings. 

She thinks of the last night they were together. 

It’s pitch dark, but she knows well how to get to his room from the ground. There’s a lone chair at the back of the house, small and rusted. She just needs to drag it along and position it beneath his window. (Like always.) When he helps her in, he apologizes for Tom and for Bruce. For what they said to her that day. In the place of frustration, peace washes up. On his bed—a sanctuary of a bed, grounding and safe—she nestles against him. His hair is soft in her hand as he kisses a ticklish part of her throat because he knows it will make her laugh. 

It does. 

But, among all the cricket songs rising up from the grass, the mild noise she makes doesn’t disturb his family’s needful sleep. And it’s not long before they drift off themselves. 

Oh, his family. They’ll never be the same without him. 

She doesn’t want to think of hers.

She’s impulsively opened her eyes. The monster is crawling to her, over her. It consumes her vision, and she doesn’t know what sensation to brace herself for. Ripping, pulling, smothering, crushing. _Let this dream be over._

The suspense makes her fidget and cringe and—

It roars like a lion. 

A different sound counters it. The crash of a door as it’s forced from its hinges. There’s more roaring, and then it happens. It collides with the wall and collides again. Again on the ceiling and a fourth time on the floor. Eleven—she’s _here_ —screams powerfully with all of the strength she wishes she had herself.

The proxy mind flayer leaves her sight.

She takes a violent breath. Shocked and confused. She’d been compliant with it. Passive and weak all because of her fear. 

How had she been stronger at sixteen? She felt shatterproof at the time. 

At least, she did when she wasn’t alone.

“Are you okay? Are you okay?” 

Jonathan’s here. His hand, not skeletal, his _human hand_ covers her jaw and cheek, and he searches her face fearfully. Distraught, she nods at him over and over. 

She won’t cry. She bites down hard on her tongue so she doesn’t. She cannot _believe_ him. All of the injuries he must have—

And she was the one who needed saving.

She gets to her knees and presses herself against him. He flinches, but she can’t pull back; she wants to crawl into him, curl in his arms, remain covered by him forever. 

Her dependence on him, it’s—

Deeper than she ever realized. Unhealthy, probably, but that’s how this works between them. They have to have each other. If their lives were different, it wouldn’t be the torture that it is.

_Good_ torture. 

“It’s time to go,” he pants, fingers combing sludge out of her hair. 

And it is, and she’ll go. With him. They’re never splitting up again. 

**Author's Note:**

> title from matt maltese’s surreal “curl up & die”
> 
> (i apologize for the melodrama)


End file.
